outskirts
Britishplural noun
Explanation
Some people like to live downtown. Others prefer the open spaces of the suburbs. But if you live in between the two, you are in the outskirts, the place where the city ends and the suburbs begin. Outskirts describes the outer edge of a city or town, farthest from the center but still technically part of that place. If you had a city map, you could draw a line on all sides where crowded streets filled with apartment buildings and businesses begin to give way to single-family houses and country roads. You might not get a perfect circle but you will see that outskirts are those border places between the city and the little towns that surround it.
Vocabulary lists containing outskirts
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Marset hails from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
Dangote's sprawling refinery on the outskirts of Lagos, which began operating two years ago and now processes around 700,000 barrels of crude a day, has transformed the fortunes of Nigeria's oil sector.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
On the outskirts of the capital, Palma, some locals who can no longer afford an apartment live in sprawling communities of camper vans.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
The fire started near a school in the Bagira district on the city's northern outskirts early on Thursday "while the children were in the middle of class", local leader Patrice Buduge told AFP.
From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026
Opening the window, she noticed Dale walking along the lawn at the outskirts of the woods.
From "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
